Apple recently published a series of ads that make me want to run away screaming. I actually think these ads hurt Apple’s brand, and I certainly dislike their AI product more after watching them than before. Apple’s recent series of terrible ads started with the crushing ad for iPad Pro. In it, a hydraulic press crushed art, instruments, creative tools, etc. into a flat shape with paint running down the sides of the press as if the items were bleeding. The outcry about this ad was strong and very negative,^[1][2][3] you’d think Apple took this to heart and tried to learn from it, right? Well, apparently not.

Apple had two main themes with its recent AI ads: Lying and Incompetence.

Apple Intelligence | Catch up quick | MacBook Pro

Apple Intelligence | Email summary | iPhone 16 Pro

These two promote lying and not doing your job in a cringy way. I actually had to force myself to watch them to write this post, otherwise I wouldn’t have. They also suggest that the main characters are replaceable by AI and should be fired immediately.

Apple Intelligence | More personal Siri | iPhone 16 Pro

This one is worse. It promotes lying, but on a personal level. She’s the new employee in this story, and nobody would expect her to remember the name of someone she had a meeting with “a couple of months ago”, the other character actually says exactly that. Yet, instead of having a normal human interaction, she uses AI to query his name and then pretends she remembered him. Apple seems to suggest fake caring is a good thing, and with that, here is another one promoting lying for no good reason:

Apple Intelligence | Create memory movies | iPhone 16

I don’t even know where to begin. The dad’s first line is: "We said no gifts…", setting the stage emotionally. His wife not having a gift is not the issue here, yet Apple suggests that in response to the surprise gifts from her daughters, she must trump them—which is, I think, a toxic behavior. The fact that she uses AI to generate a short movie with memories doesn’t really bother me, but the scenario in which she uses AI is disturbing. To relax, lets move on to the next, which is, for a change, not terrible:

Apple Intelligence | Custom memory movies | iPhone 16 Pro

This one, I think, is actually fine—except the smug face. The difference is that Apple Intelligence is used to stop the dad from lying. Instead of an AI assisted lie, the ad promotes using AI to generate a short movie remembering the daughter’s pet fish. The family watches it to stop the dad from pretending he cares. At last, a little bit of honesty!

Apple Intelligence | Change your tone | MacBook Pro

This one suggests that instead of processing your anger yourself, and calming the fuck down, you should just write an angry letter and have Apple Intelligence re-write it to remove all personality and make it sound soulless. The original text in the video is actually funny, but it also mentions a description of his job that is very ironic: “That pudding was my only light in an otherwise bleak corporate existence”. Once Apple Intelligence is done rewriting his email, it truly is a bleak corporate fake-positive email.

The original email in this ad:

The AI version:

Apple Intelligence | Writing Tools | iPhone 16

In this one we go from:

Hey J,

Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you're the big enchilada. Holler back,

💪warren💪

To:

Hey J,

Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best regards,

Warren

More professional? Sure. Less personal and dead feeling? Absolutely! And if you watch it to the end you’ll see that the ad basically suggests faking it if you’re incompetent. Yet another example of what I wrote above: "They also suggest that the main characters are replacible by AI and should be fired immediately."

A Reminder

Remember how Apple promoted its AI products at WWDC? They gave tons of examples that were largely positive—instead of cringe. From Minutes 1:12 to 1:24 Apple actually shows a clip from the only ad they ran recently that was pleasant to watch. I shared it above, its the "Custom memory movies" ad.

After this rant, I feel I should clarify on one point: I’m not opposed to AI in principle. However, most AI training is done under inhumane conditions^[4] and a lot of it using stolen intellectual property.^[5] I see the utility and value of AI when used right. These ads, however, for the most part, promote using AI in morally dubious ways.

This post was originally inspired by Oliver Reichenstein’s Mastodon thread about Apple’s ads.

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